We’re talking nature, but nurture too is involved; by concieving a child at a different time, you’re ensuring that it will grow up in a slightly different atmosphere. It may not make much difference, say, if a child is born on the 10th or the 11th of a month (although you never know); but a summer vs. a winter baby could have a significant effect on their personality.
The “you” comes from the physical material of the brain + the experiences the brain goes thru interacting with the physical world. Think of it as a process, not an event. The “you” that is you now is no the same “you” that was you 10 years ago. Or 5 minutes ago, for that matter.
I could be had I been the one to get to that username first before the you consciousness (as opposed to the me consciousness) got to it.
You and I get into an argument in a bar. I decide to punch you in the neck. I think about it, and I go for it. You, being a pacifist, decide to let it go. You thought about it, and you made a decision.
You could reverse that and have me be the pacifist, and you be the jerk. But, it is still me making one decision and you making the other.
I think I’m at the limit of how well I can explain it.
No. How can anybody answer this and be reasonably sure? The answers I see are that consciousness is an illusion, so there is no ‘you,’ (but then who is the illusion fooling?), or consciousness is real, and I have no idea what in hell property can make one system conscious and another not.
That I’m not sure I agree with. When I was seven, I decided to steal a pack of gum from the card store. Based on experience, and time, I wouldn’t make that decision 23 years later, but it would still be me making the opposite decision.
You can say that I matured, and changed over time. To others, I would appear to be a completely different person. But, within my head, I’m still the same person.
It seems likely to me that the “you” making the decision is really a neural network in your brain that’s operating a series of heuristics and algorithms trying to reach a conclusion on whether to smack me. If that neural network is for some reason different, then inasmuch as there’s a “you,” it’s a different “you.”
Daniel
If I understand correctly, identical twins came from the same sperm cell. Yet each has their own separate consciousness. This suggests to me that what you’re calling consciousness (and what others might call a “soul” or a “self”) comes into existence or enters the body at some time after conception.
In this part of the OP, it seems that you are saying that each sperm cell contains a complete set of genetic material and the consciousness that will develop from that set of genes. (I may have misunderstood your statement.)
A sperm cell is really a half-cell; that is, it has only half the genes necessary to build a person in the womb. It doesn’t even become a potential human until it fertilizes your wife’s egg, which is also a half-cell until then. If the consciousness is genetically determined, nothing is decided until that particular sperm and that particular egg become one whole cell. The same goes for hundreds of physical traits, from skin and hair color to musical talent.
I don’t believe it is realistic to assume that each sperm represents a consciousness. If you believe that the hordes of unsuccessful sperm cells “represent millions of consciousnesses that will never be,” I can’t imagine the guilt you must carry around. After all, your testes churn out millions of them every day. Most of them die without ever having been launched, let alone given a shot at the egg.
I understand all of that. I was merely leaving the egg half of the DNA out of the equation because there is (usually) only one egg per ovulation opportunity. Thus, if consciousness is determined genetically, there is really only one egg consciousness. So, I think what I’m saying is that the unique combination of sperm and egg will lead to a unique consciousness, but there is only one egg each cycle, and thus the sperm is the only variable.
I think that I do actually believe that a different sperm will lead to a different “self” or “consciousness”, but carry no guilt about it.
I’m the father of three and I think you’re worrying WAY too much about this.
There are millions of unknow, interrelated factors that will make your child unique. Your genes will be responsible for some of them, your wife’s for some others, how the pregnancy progresses for others still, and who-knows-what for who-knows-how-much.
Individuality can not be reduced to a recipe or a mathematical formula. A million sperm represent a million possibilities, but that doesn’t mean all those possibilities would come to pass. It’s like the infinite number of monkeys typing until they reproduce Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean they won’t also produce a lot output that not only isn’t Shakespeare, it isn’t anything.
I’m not so much worrying about it, as it is just messing with my head.
On second thought, I’m starting to get attached to this idea where each combination of sperm and egg represents a unique consciousness. Each fertilized egg is a unique human being with a specific “I” to it, right?
Give it a few days of division, becoming a ball of cells, and then it splits into two separate cell masses that will then become identical twins.
Now, it flies in the face of reason for consciousness to split. A human being can’t be born with half of an identity, right?
ERGO! One twin is born without any consciousness.
This is why people are always writing and talking about evil twins. This is why all cloning sci-fi involves evil clones.
Yes, out of every pair of identical twins one is a mindless monster.
In the past, the complications related to twin pregnancies were more likely to end in one or both fetuses dying, especially during birth when safe C-sections were not available. This, luckily for the rest of us, cut down on the number of twins allowed to live. Yet, modern medicine has made it possible for twins to be born in large numbers.
Our only hope is to have trained, professionals at every birth in which identical twins, triplets, or worse are expected. This clergyman will then examine each infant to determine which was born without any consciousness for our safety.
I’m not sure one could make “consciousness” in any way equivalent to DNA or brain physiology, even if one’s personality, etc. were 100% genetically determined. That’s like equating hands with playing the piano. Your brain is the organ that allows for consciousness. Being conscious is what your brain is doing, not what it is. You could say that any of the millions of sperm produced might give rise to a different variant of human brain, and hence what that brain can do will vary accordingly. I shouldn’t think this would be at all controversial, nor at all worth worrying about, since you have little to no influence on spermatocyte behavior post-ejaculation.
That’s because you’re still thinking of consciousness as a thing and not a process. Consciousness isn’t “you”, it’s you, thinking (ie, interacting with the environment). And here I’m using “thinking” in the human sense-- ie, self-aware thinking. In that sesnse, you migh say that your consciousness came into being (or started, if we stay with the process analogy) when you became self-aware. But that isn’t any particular moment because becoming self-aware is itself a process and not an event.
I’m going to stop there because I’m going to start soundling like Buddhist philosopher in a minute. 
I present you with the Ship of Theseus. You might also google on “continuity consciousness” and the like.
Several years ago, the lovely Gaudere and I had a fascinating debate about abortion. We both tended to agree that it would be wrong to kill a mind capable of human thought. She presented a cite from a developmental neurologist or somesuch that pegged this time somewhere around the fifth month of gestation IIRC. Just to be sure she and I kicked it back a month, though I think my stance was one month shy of her stance.
Anyway, after that I felt pretty secure about abortion.
This Christmas though I get a book called The Singularity is Near In it, Ray Kurzweil is talking about human thought, AI, and consciousness.
He points out a new more modern study about the brain’s development. It seems that humans and a few other high primates have this extra type of brain cell that no other animal has (humans have a lot, chimps fewer.) This type of neuron is actually very large and a single one spans several portions of the brain, connecting various higher functions. Nobody was sure what it does.
Then they found it. It seems that this type of neuron allows you mirror control. Only humans and a couple of other primates can manipulate objects in a mirror. You see your hand in the mirror, and it doesn’t move in the same direction as you move your hand, but relative to the way you move your hand. By using these neurons you are able to understand that the mirror is simply a representation of your hand, and you can look at that representation and manipulate things without seeing them directly.
They know that it is these neurons working because they can image them during the process and they light up like Christmas trees during such an operation.
How well you can manipulate through a mirror depends on how many of these neurons you have. Species without any simply can’t learn to do. Those with few can only do it poorly. Those with many do it well.
These neurons let you recognize “Self” and “not self” and the relationships between the two. These neurons light up as people consider moral questions.
These are the neurons that are responsible for consciousness. Consciousness, it seems, evolved accidently out of the need to manipulate tools.
Now, the really interesting thing is that human beings do not start to get these neurons until they are 2 years old!
If you’ve had kids, you’ve probably recognized the change that occurs at this time. They start to recognize others besides themselves as seperate entities. Their play goes from purposelessness to accomplishing things. They become “Conscious” and moral entities.
They are suddenly capable of human thought.
I’ve been thinking since then about that debate with Gaudere. Do we need to revise the date of abortions to two years old???
(If anybody is interested, I’ll go get the book and share some specifics)
I’ve seen a talk by Marco Iacoboni (who has done some interesting work with mirror neurons). I will tell you now that he (and perhaps others) greatly overstate the potential of these cells. It is most certainly NOT appropriate to say mirror neurons are RESPONSIBLE for consciousness. They may be a component of it, to be sure, but this is such a gross oversimplification of the phenomenon of consciousness as to be somewhat offensive.
-nameless, Neuroscience Student
Doesn’t the question just boil down to “If things were different, would they be different?”
To which I would answer: … Probably.
Thanks. Just ordered it, and will give it a read.
This I agree with. I’m not so sure of your claim that you “control” things, that you are in charge. I don’t think we’re in charge nearly as much as we’d like to believe.
Take intelligence, for instance. A lot of people are not as intelligent as you, whatever that means, and cannot make the types of connections you can make. Can you control your mind into not seeing those connections, into not thinking? Some people can’t not be sociopaths, and some, I think, wouldn’t be able to kill someone in cold blood without lots of conditioning. We may fool ourselves into thinking we chose this path, but it is chose for us, by a combination of genetics and environment.